Taiwan Quick Take: Mayor wants prison museum

Chiayi Mayor Huang Ming-hui (黃敏惠) will solicit central government support for a plan to turn an old prison in the southern city into a prison museum when she attends a meeting of city and county chiefs in the south of the country later this week. Huang, a legislator-turned-mayor who is the only local chief among the eight from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said that the Ministry of the Interior designated the old prison as a national historical relic last year, making it Chiayi's only national historical relic. She said the prison, completed in 1922 when the country was under Japanese colonial rule, has a distinctive architectural style. The Chiayi City Government has applied to the Ministry of Justice for a subsidy of NT$310 million (US$9.48 million) to turn the old prison into a museum by 2009.